


Corner Man

by Snapjack



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types
Genre: Extraordinarily fleeting mention of Vesper Lynd, F/M, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 23:07:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11861538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snapjack/pseuds/Snapjack
Summary: Eve fucks him before telling him her full name. Her mother would be horrified.





	Corner Man

Eve fucks him before telling him her full name. Her mother would be horrified.

 

Eve herself is pretty well chuffed. She pegs his type from the moment she meets him—gruff, patient, not prone to a lot of chit-chat afterwards. Nothing worse than a talky man she has to pitch out of her apartment at two in the morning. A whole generation of therapy-goers and chat-show guests. Eve prefers her men silent, seen but not heard, and the way Bond eyefucks her from across a room is just exactly to her liking, thank you. She buys her own ticket to Shanghai and completes the seduction with a minimum of fuss, before it becomes the kind of thing either of them can’t work around.

 

To her surprise, he doesn’t stop flirting with her afterwards. Bond’s file has prepared her to be treated as a disposable pleasure, a one-time thing. Which is why it takes her a few moments after he has spoken, to realize that he’s speaking to her. It’s late afternoon in Eve’s office, and Gareth’s Thursday chat with the PM is running over. Through the wall, Eve can hear his voice beginning to take on the note of strained patience that always precedes a bit of phone-smashing. Bond hasn’t taken his eyes off his own reflection in the polished wood of Gareth’s door, the vain thing.

“I can never get these bloody things to lay right.” He is irritably fidgeting with one of the plastic swipey ID tags that Denbigh has been forcing all of MI6 to wear. Denbigh is not long for this division, Eve fears.

“That’s because it wasn’t meant to be worn with a worsted-wool mid-weight dinner jacket from Timothy Everest,” Eve says, only a light note of mockery entering her voice as she rises and goes to help him fix it. He smirks down at her as she realigns the clasp. He has a boxer’s nose, she realizes—almost certainly broken more than twice. His ears, too, are a bit battered-looking; Eve wonders, not for the first time, what Bond would have become if M hadn’t gotten him first, gotten him young. He would either be dead, or have much less scar tissue. Either way, he would be much less handsome.

“There,” she says, after an unnecessarily long time adjusting the alligator clasp. She steps away and Bond holds her gaze for a moment longer before glancing down at his pocket.

“Still awful.”

“Indeed. I’ll tell Gareth you’re horribly concerned about the damage Denbigh is wreaking on your wardrobe.” 

“Mmm. Don’t,” says Bond. “Instead, come by and do some damage yourself.” Gareth’s door is opening, the man himself standing there flustered in his shirtsleeves, a detached phone handset dangling from his fingertips. He raises the handset slightly sheepishly, the cord dragging on the carpet. “Eve, I seem to have broken another phone.”

“I’ll call down to IT, have them bring you up another handset,” Eve promises.

“Thank you,” Gareth says, his manners beautifully restored by some therapeutic smashing. As the door closes behind the two men, Bond looks over his shoulder at Eve.

“Eight o’clock, shall we say?” Winks. And then is gone.

“Cheeky bastard,” Eve mutters to herself.

 

She is there at 8:02.

 

“You’re late,” he says upon opening the door to see Eve, smirking in her most teenaged jacket, the white leather one with the red stripes and hoodie. His next words are delivered, about an hour later, from the floor slightly to the left of the bed.

“I think takeaway, don’t you?”

Eve lifts her head from his shoulder, surveys the damage. A line of torn and discarded clothing leads out the bedroom door and down the stairs to just inside the front door. “Yes. Yes, a Chinese would be lovely.”

 

They land on his couch in front of the telly, Eve curled up with her feet in his lap, sharing Chinese out of the same box and fighting for tidbits with their chopsticks. She cannot say why she has the feeling that this—takeaway in front of the telly—is new to Bond, but the impression is unmistakable. More than anyone she has ever met, she suspects Bond of not having had any sort of adolescence. The introduction of a simple sports or movie reference to a conversation is enough to cast him totally adrift; even now, he’s looking utterly bewildered by an episode of “Behind the Music” about Paula Abdul. He is old enough to be Eve’s father, but that isn’t it—someone kept him from all this, kept him apart, taught him to be a man before he ever had a chance to be a child. Eve thinks that he would have made a lovely teenager, all knobby knees and stick-out ears; smiling, she inches her foot a little further up his thigh. His mouth twists a little as he sets the Chinese container down. Looks at her. The tackle sends rice and chopsticks spilling to the floor, Eve’s giggles rapidly turning into moans underneath him. By the time she leaves, it is two in the morning and all the buses are done; Bond invites her to stay, but Eve thinks someone will notice if she wears the same clothes to work tomorrow.

“Do you really think they will?” says Bond sleepily against her hair.

“It’s MI6, I should bloody well hope they would,” says Eve.

“Mmm,” says Bond, stretching like a great, sleepy panther. It’s some time before Eve realizes he’s fallen completely asleep. She rises and lets herself out, takes a cab home. She’s already to the ring road before she realizes she’s still smiling.

 

 

A routine emerges. It’s not as though they’re dating, exactly; Bond never exactly asks her out, per se, and Eve’s quite certain he doesn’t have her mobile number. She certainly has no idea how to contact him outside of school—the idea of James having, say, a Facebook account, or texting, seems faintly ludicrous. But every time he comes by to annoy Gareth, he finds a new and horrible way to make Eve smile, and then they fall into bed together, and she refuses to spend the night, sensing—or perhaps fearing—that if she does, his interest will be lost. It occurs to her, after the fourth time, that while she may be the first person Bond has ever shared Chinese with in front of the telly, that that does not mean she has not been quickly and efficiently boxed into a convenient space within his world.

 “Am I a thing you’ve won from Gareth?” she asks him, and his face does a complicated warping wince.

“What a horrible female question,” he says, and Eve can’t help the guffaw it startles out of her. “Where on earth did you get that from?”

“I wondered if it was a pissing contest between you two?” she gets out.

Bond looks affronted at the idea that he would be in competition with Mallory for anything. “No.” Then a thought occurs to him and he pulls an even more elaborate face. “Wait, are you saying you might have gone with Mallory?”

Eve smacks him with a pillow. “No. He is married, and my boss, and he’s addicted to his work.” For emphasis, she punctuates each point with another smack from the pillow, until he snatches it from her.

“I am technically above you in the pecking order,” Bond points out, unnecessarily smug, as he puts the pillow safely behind his head.

“Oh dear,” says Eve. “Against regulations. Are you saying we have to stop?” She is sitting on her knees in a tangle of sheets, naked as a jaybird except for the rather short plaid skirt she wore over to James’s place today and which he insisted on fucking her in, hiking it up around her waist in a bunched manner that Eve finds unflattering. However, one cannot argue with results. Eve feels as if her cervix has been fucked into her ribcage.

In response to her question, Bond smiles wider. “Actually, I rather like breaking the rules.”

 

 

Thus begins an unprecedented spree of unprofessionalism across all three of MI6’s major facilities, encompassing janitorial closets, elevators, and (once, memorably) the blind end of a stairwell right outside Mallory’s office. Bond, as anyone with access to his file could have sussed out in seconds, has a thing for almost getting caught, another thing entirely about authority, and a third thing about convincing Eve to make very bad decisions in service of the first and second things. Eve would protest, but apparently she has a bit of a thing for bad decisions, too. The first time Bond invites her to drive his Jaguar—too fast—then slides his hand up her skirt as she’s navigating a tricky roundabout, she nearly takes them off the road.

“Easy there,” he says mildly, his thumb drawing circles over her through her panties.

“OI!! Are you trying to get us both killed?” Eve screeches as a Mercedes honks at her.

“Hardly,” says Bond. His thumb is still grazing her. “I am trying to make you a better driver.”

“A better driver,” Eve sputters, taking the wrong exit towards Brighton.

“Yes. You’ll never be any good in a chase until you can deal with distraction.”

“Oh, is that so,” says Eve, spreading her knees a little farther and putting the Jaguar into sport mode. Brighton, here she comes.

 

 

They arrive late, and are forced to stay in a rather dingy seaside motel. The floor in the room is tile rather than carpet—which Eve thinks quite practical, given all the sand.  More questionably, there is a sparkly purple Jacuzzi in the bathroom.

“Have we been given the honeymoon suite?” she wonders aloud.

Bond wanders into the bathroom. “Obviously,” he deadpans upon seeing the Jacuzzi. They inspect the tub in silence. The control panel has been dislodged at one point, and wires are visible behind it. The faint smell of artificial strawberries and disinfectant hangs in the air.

“Right then,” says Eve. “Romance.”

“Right.”

They gaze at the plastic tub for another beat before breaking into peals of laughter.

 

That evening goes… differently. Instead of having raucous sex and then sly, sideways conversation, Eve and Bond end up fully dressed, lying on their bellies on the polyester bedspread, an open pizza box between them and a documentary on Lewis Hamilton on the telly, having a conversation about sports. Incredible. 

“Favorite boxer,” Eve says.

“Easy. Liston.”

“Liston, really?”

“Yes. Raw power, could take a punch better than anyone. Wasn’t afraid of the pain, didn’t try to duck it. He would just stand there and let his opponent wear himself out. And Sonny would still be standing when he was done.”

Eve smiles dreamily. “You sound almost poetic about it.”

“Well, there’s nothing more poetic than boxing,” Bond says, rolling over on his side and propping his head on the heel of his hand. “It’s the purest sport there is, save maybe a footrace. Pure contest, you versus me, let’s see who wins. And yet it’s also chess, a mental game. People miss that, in the blood and the bone of it.”

“Yes, they do,” Eve agrees, dreamily, falling under the spell of his voice and the blue light of the television. Bond glances at her, an appraising sort of look.

“Would you like me to teach you?”

“What, to box?”

“Yes.”

“What, here? Right now?”

“Well, of course we can’t do very much without gloves. But I can teach you the basics.”

“All right,” Eve says, sleepy and agreeable on pizza. She rises with an undignified “oof” and stands, her feet bare on the cool tile floor. Bond turns off the television and faces her.

“Now, do you know what the most difficult thing about boxing is?”

Eve has watched television. “Yes. Keeping your hands up.”

“Good,” he says. “You are going to want to lower them. You are going to become tired, and those hands are going to feel like lead weights. But they are your only defense, and without them you will die, do you understand?”

“Yes,” Eve says, putting her fists up.

“A little low still. Here, higher.  Guard your brain. Your jaw will take care of itself.”

Eve puts her head down and peers between her raised fists. “Where do I punch?”

“That depends on your opponent, on his weaknesses. You can exhaust a man with body blows, but you need to be quick, because every time you lower your fist, the head is vulnerable. The head is the quickest route to a knockout, both for you and for him.”

Eve nods, and the boxing lesson continues, Bond shaping her bony fists and guiding them, slowly, into head shots and body blows, showing her the best places to strike when an opponent is tired; when he is distracted; when he is woozy.

“You’re too tight here. Tightness comes from your stomach, not from your fists. As I travel down your limbs to the strike point, I should feel increasing looseness, not increasing tension.”

“Now this, the occipital ridge, is the most reinforced part of the skull. Where’s the least reinforced part? Where do you think you should strike?”

“Now, you may be getting very tired. You may be in terrible pain. This is when a boxer starts to bargain. ‘Listen, don’t hurt me too much, and I won’t hurt you, okay mate?’ That’s the sort of agreement your pain will try to make, mentally, with your opponent.”

“Your hand doesn’t pull the punch forward, your back and shoulder push it from behind. By the time your fist arrives on the scene, it should have a freight train behind it.”

 

“I’ll give you a freight train,” says Eve, tired and laughing. She steps in and kisses Bond, dropping her hand to his fly. “And oh look, I’ve found the locomotive.”

“Is this your way of telling me we’re done with the boxing lesson?”  
“Clever man.”

“Oh, I have my moments.”

 

 

 

 

Two weeks later, Bond goes and falls in love with a silent French psychiatrist with a face like a saucer of skim milk. There was that freight train Eve was expecting.

 

 

 

“It’s not even as though I have any right to expect otherwise,” she complains to her therapist, the skeletally thin and alarmingly dapper Edwin.

“You’re hurt because this predictable man’s predictable rejection was predictable, which threatens your image of yourself as an intelligent woman,” Edwin drawls, cheek pillowed on his fist, not even bothering to conceal his boredom. “Wake me when you get to what’s underneath that, please.”

Eve settles into the couch, chastened. They’ve been here before. “I need to stop bidding for the attention of men who won’t give it to me,” she recites obediently, and Edwin gives her a little ‘hurry it up’ finger swirl, encouraging her to go deeper. “I need to… stop looking for those men specifically?”

Edwin snorts impatiently and rearranges himself on the chair. “Stop wasting time promising me a change you’ve no intention of enacting. Get further. Why aren’t you going to stop chasing men like this?”

“Because I like the chase.”

“Bullshit.”

“Because I like the way they make me feel.”

“Now that I believe. But let’s identify that feeling specifically.”

“Right now, pretty miserable,” says Eve, and Edwin nearly rockets out of his chair.

“Yes! Yes, that’s it, you’ve said it, yes. They make you miserable.”

“And that misery,” Even finishes slowly, “Is comfortable to me. It feels normal.”

“Correct.”

“Because it feels like my dad.”

“Don’t be lazy.”

“It feels like both my parents,” Eve corrects, and Edwin nods in a satisfied way. “Both my parents were neglectful and withholding of attention, so that is now my expectation. It’s where I’m calibrated at. It’s what love feels like to me.”

“And that is?”

“Bullshit?” Eve guesses.

“Not your fault,” Edwin fills in gently. “But also bullshit, yes.”

“So, what do I do about it?” asks Eve, and Edwin shrugs.

“What do you think you could do about it? To reset your calibration, as it were?”

“Welllll,” says Eve. “I suppose I could treat myself to a massage.”

“A massage,” says Edwin, his eyebrows high. “Why a massage?”

“I like them,” says Eve. “I like them, and they’re a person putting hands on me kindly, without any kind of ulterior motive. I mean, I’m paying them, but in a way that means I’m driving them, right? I’m treating myself kindly, through them?”

Edwin, eyebrows still raised, reaches over to the end table in which he keeps sweets. He rummages around in a drawer for a while, selects a lime lolly, and passes it ceremoniously to Eve, who takes it with the sense of decorum and awe that the occasion deserves. Edwin is very selective about which breakthroughs deserve lollies.

“Also, I have trust issues, so letting someone place their hands on my back is very difficult for me,” she volunteers.

“Don’t go fishing for another lolly when I’ve just given you one,” returns Edwin, and Eve, chastened, unwraps the lime one and pops it in her mouth. They sit in comfortable silence.

“I like orange better.”

“Shut up.”

 

 

 

As it turns out, Eve rather needs that massage the next week, when Denbigh turns out to be a mole for a secret organization whose members wear—no shit—matching creepy octopus rings. Because what is Eve’s life, the discovery of this organization involves the destruction of half of London, and because of course he does, Bond ends up crashing a helicopter onto Westminster Bridge, where he holds an international terrorist at gunpoint for an alarmingly long time before walking off with the milk-faced psychiatrist, who is really beginning to get under Eve’s nerves. Especially because Sky News won’t stop running it.

“Can’t someone get Kate on the phone and tell her to cook up a bit of a pregnancy?” moans Gareth, watching as, for the eightieth time, helicopter meets bridge. Gareth’s second handset of the day is in broken bits in the rubbish; Eve is going to tell Q to start sending up broken ones.

“We asked her after Silva blew up the old headquarters,” says Eve. “She doesn’t answer our phone calls anymore.”

“Clever girl,” mutters Gareth into his nibbled thumbnail. Then, as Sky News restarts the clip, he muses, “What do you suppose my predecessor would have done?”

“Had him shot,” Eve says, before she can stop herself.

“Funny, but really.”

“I wasn’t joking.”  

Gareth glances at her. “You shot him yourself once, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“How did that work out?”

“It didn’t.”

“Mmm,” says Gareth, going to his desk and pulling out a fifth of scotch. “Sit with me.”

Eve sits. They drink. Sky News shows the helicopter crash in slow motion.

“I often wonder,” says Gareth, “why we stopped keeping prisoners in the Tower.”

“Thinking of chucking a few journalists in?” says Eve.

“Just Bond,” says Gareth. “Less expensive.” They watch chunks of priceless London history shearing off into the river in slow motion.

“We’d be suffering under the oppression of several psychopathic criminal terrorists,” Eve points out.

“There’s always something,” says Gareth.

 

 

 

The next time she sees Bond is in the basement of the new new headquarters, where a very pissy Q, surrounded by packing crates, is still throwing a tantrum over the most recent upheaval. When she arrives on the scene, he’s in a mulish standoff with Bond over weaponry. Eve will give Q this: he has no survival instincts whatsoever.

“I’ve told you, I’ve no idea when our next weapons shipment will be in. Would you like to wait on the phone with DHL?”

Bond’s nostrils flare in shock—as he’s beginning his retort, Eve takes him by the elbow. “Let’s do this another time, shall we?”

“That little shit needs about thirty years’ worth of thrashings,” grumbles Bond, but allows Eve to steer him away from the chaos and to a quiet spot near the archives, where she distracts him with directness: “So I hear you and Madeline have gotten engaged.”

He is wrong-footed, but only momentarily. “Yes.”

“Congratulations,” says Eve firmly. “Will she be immigrating, then?”

“Yes,” says Bond. “I’ve taken a flat in Knightsbridge, and she’ll be doing a year’s trial employment at Hopley Clinic.”

Of course, thinks Eve, for whom a job has never simply materialized out of thin air and a desire to live in a fashionable neighborhood. Out loud, she says, “That sounds wonderful. You must let me know when you select a pattern, I’ll get something nice from the registry.”

“How very kind,” Bond demurs. “Now I’m off to relieve Mallory of his guns until Q branch gives me mine. Miss Moneypenny.” Something just a little too courtly in his leave-taking; Eve suddenly intuits, deep under Bond’s boarding-school manners, barely banked fury. Mister Bond, she mouths as he brushes past, not saying the words out loud lest she awaken whatever is sleeping beneath those floorboards.

 

 

She takes a two-month assignment to go supervise the installation of a new intelligence-gathering branch within the British embassy in Spain. Her hotel room is lovely and tasteful, with no tub. She eats blackened sea bream and fragrant yellow rice, drinks Spanish red wine. Takes a slim young personal trainer to bed and feels healed by the gentle, female touch. Tells herself she is not recovering from Bond—that there was hardly anything there to recover from—at least thirty times a day.

“So what you’re telling me is that you faffed about in a hot climate for two months, chased pussy, and went into a state of extreme denial,” says Edwin upon her return. “Christ, it’s like I’m talking to him myself, are you aware that he’s your mirror?”

“I missed you too, Edwin,” says Eve.

“Stop dodging the question.”

“Yes, I’m aware there are similarities,” said Eve. “Though if you saw him, you’d laugh at that.”

“I doubt it,” said Edwin. “So, what’s stopping you?”

“From…” Eve trails off, and Edwin raises his eyebrows pointedly. “Well, for all I know he’s married already.”

“Not exactly a relevant consideration to either of you,” Edwin points out, a low blow, since it has been years since Eve went scaling that particular cactus.

“Meanie,” says Eve.

“Accurate,” says Edwin. “What makes him any different?”

“I don’t want to be that girl for Bond,” says Eve. “I want to be better.” Immediately upon hearing herself, she is embarrassed. She sits in reddening silence, but Edwin doesn’t mock or tease. Instead, he takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.

“Eve, that’s good.”

“Stop.”

“I quite mean it. It’s good you’ve found someone who makes you want to be better.”

“Stop,” Eve says again, but more uncertainly. Then, “Really?”

“Really. Very few people ever find another person who makes them wish to improve their own behavior. Most people spend their lives looking for justification, for validation of their worst behaviors and most destructive and unhealthy tendencies. Frequently they find that validation in a mate. The opposite is rare.”

“I haven’t found a—Bond’s not my mate,” Eve sputters, but Edwin waves it away with a weary hand.

“Don’t be tedious, fucking regularly and sharing monogrammed stationary are hardly the only definitions of the term. An intimate partner, present or past. Very few people seek out one who challenges them to rise to a higher standard.”

Eve frowns. “So, where does that leave me? With Bond getting married and me with this sudden interest in high-minded morality?”

“Oh, you it leaves completely out in the cold,” said Edwin. “You’re not going to be fucking anybody, missy.” At Eve’s expression, he adds, “What, you thought having morals was going to be easy? Let me remind you that at high altitudes, things get much, much colder.”

“So what should I do?” says Eve.

“Buy a parka,” Edwin says tartly. “Time’s up.”

 

 

 

 

 

Eve resumes practice at the shooting range. The first time Bond sees her there, his expression darkens dangerously—he seems on the verge of saying something, but Eve sets her jaw and fires three rounds directly into the throat of her target, and the moment passes unremarked. He pointedly puts himself at the opposite end of the range whenever she is there, which Eve finds childish—who but an overgrown man-child would wish his partners to disappear after he was done fucking them?—but which she does not remark upon. Taking the high road and all. She goes out to dinner with one of her school friends and discovers that she is not the only one suffering these problems; Joanna, who is in law, has a junior partner at her firm who has not made eye contact with her for a full year following a brief relationship.

“I almost want to corner him in a stairwell and be like, look, Trevor. It’s not that big of a deal. You’re making it a big deal by behaving like such a twat,” Joanna says, reasonably, over a Cobb salad.

“Exactly!” says Eve in exasperation. “Why do they think their penises are the be all and end all of our universes? Are they really that upset to see that we go on existing after they come?”

Joanna snorts. “I saw a Tweet I really liked, about how it has to have been a man who invented virginity, because only a man could think that getting a cock up you changes who you are, fundamentally, as a person.”

Eve widens her eyes. “That is so true. And explains so much about Dennis Pittman!”

“No. Not lower-sixth-form Dennis Pittman!” 

“One and the same.”

“But I thought you thought he was such a chav!”

“He was a chav, that’s what I liked about him,” Eve says smugly, and pops a cherry tomato in her mouth.  

“Do you have any idea where he ended up?”

“Not a clue,” says Eve.

“But you’re in intelligence, couldn’t you just…”

“I could, but I wouldn’t,” says Eve virtuously, leaving out the bit where she checked up on every single school master she ever had, just to see if any of them were pederasts. Disappointingly, no.

Joanna leans in. “Now for the important bit. Was he any good?”

“Of course ‘e wasn’t,” says Eve, “It was lower sixth form. You want to know who was good, Hilary Broadbent the next year. She was killer.”

Joanna drops her fork.

 

 

 

After a satisfying evening of scandalizing her old school chum, Eve is feeling emboldened. She walks home instead of calling for a cab, enjoying the unseasonably warm air and the swing of her new, bright yellow wool skirt. She is ten blocks deep before she realizes that she has walked right into Knightsbridge. Sparkling display windows and tastefully concealed restaurant entrances abound. The windows of the apartments above reveal cathedral-like ceilings, and the austerely bare walls of the rich. Eve realizes it would be entirely possible to run into Bond and his new lady, out for an evening stroll, in this—how utterly inexplicable it would appear. There is no reason for her to be in this neighborhood. And, as if summoned by Eve’s own dread, here comes Bond, out for an evening stroll with his French psychiatrist, arm in arm and right in front of Eve before she can gather her thoughts or even close her open jaw, much less take evasive action.

“Eve,” says Bond in a tone of amusement. He is wearing a lemon yellow scarf tied over a navy blue wool peacoat; the effect is expensive. His… fiancée? Wife? Eve isn’t sure—is resplendent in winter wool, cream-colored down to her knees. She reminds Eve of all the lovely girls in black and white photos with Lou Reed and Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger in the 1970s. Jane Birkin. Nico. Twiggy. Muses.

“Eve,” says Bond, “This is Madeline.”

“Pleased to meet you,” says Eve, and shakes. Madeline says nothing. Her slim white hand is cool.

“Miss Moneypenny is the best shot in MI6,” says Bond, and Madeline’s face registers… something. A tiny ripple, under the surface.

“Hardly,” says Eve.

“I should say so,” says Bond. “After all, you hit me.”

And just like that, they’re gone. A “nice to meet you” or two, and Eve’s left standing in the street. Completely unmoored.

 

 

 

 

She goes home and has her first adult temper tantrum, ever. Ever. Eve, the daughter of a West Indian storekeeper and a Trinidadian nurse, has been keeping her socks pulled up for thirty-two years. In all of her school pictures, her posture is perfect. By age five, she was sharing horrified glances with her mother in the mall over other people’s children, and how they let them behave in public these days. Eve does not throw temper tantrums. Now, after kicking over the trash can, upending the pen jar, and smashing the better part of a dozen eggs, she must admit it’s surprisingly refreshing. But when the elderly lady next door knocks on her door, clearly having summoned all her courage to intervene in the murder or kidnapping or possible gang initiation next door, Eve feels terrible shame. Especially because she does not have adequate Chinese to explain herself to the lady, and must settle for a cringing apology and multiple assurances that everything OK, OK, no, no call police. Eve closes the door and leans against it heavily.

 

 

 

 

“Close the door, Eve,” says Gareth, and Eve does, noting the neatness of his office. Gareth hasn’t been smashing anything today. She wonders if she is the thing to be smashed.

Gareth leans back in his chair and studies her, his thumbs twiddling across his waistcoat. After a while, he speaks. “I’ve let something go far longer than I should have, and for that I owe you an apology.”

Eve feels her stomach take a ride down several floors. “Pardon?” she says, just in case this isn’t what she’s thinking.

“You and Bond,” says Gareth.

“Ah,” says Eve. “You knew.”

“’Course I knew,” Gareth says a bit irritably. “You were fucking in the stairwell outside my office.”

“Ah,” says Eve, and then can think of nothing else to say. She sits with her hands in her lap, feeling like a Catholic schoolgirl again, looking into the disapproving face of the Mother Superior. Gareth does the same thing as Mother Superior did, too—just let Eve sit there and stew. Eventually, he asks, “So, what do you think I should do?”

“In your position, you mean?” says Eve.

“In my position, yes,” says Gareth. “With my best bloody agent and my second-best bloody agent so tied in knots over each other that they’re both fucking useless.”

Eve swallows, trying not to give away the tremendous adrenaline surge that’s just rushed through her at the thought of Bond—Bond!—tied in knots over her. Of course, Gareth could probably hear the jump in her heart rate from across the desk. She settles for: “I’m your second best agent?”

“You’re my best agent,” says Gareth irritably, “but if you can’t get the lid screwed down on this, I’m liable to give Q that surveillance system he’s been panting after and trade the whole bloody lot of you in for some tech support boffins and a moderately new color printer from GCHQ.”

“Any suggestions?” says Eve tartly.

Gareth’s face darkens. “Yes. Shoot him again.”

 

 

 

“You never drink with me,” says Q. “Are you working for the North Koreans?”

“Don’t you think I could find a higher bidder to sell out to than the North Koreans?” says Eve, and Q mutters something catty into his glass that Eve chooses to ignore. “Anyway,” she says, “I wanted a drink and I didn’t want to drink alone, so I asked you. If you’d prefer to drink with the boots-on-the-ground boys—” she lifts her chin towards the other end of the bar, where a group of very muscled pink men who carry tactical knives are drinking beers.

Q’s shudder is eloquent. “No thanks.”

“Come on,” says Eve. “You’re not interested in hearing all about the old family place, you know, in Rhodesia? How it’s just so hard to get used to the new names for things?”

Q sets down his glass. “Get to the point. You’re not interested in a friend. You have those. You want a minority ally, you’re working your way around to asking if I’m queer, is that it?”

Eve bites her lip against a smile at the idea that Q could ever think his queerness is a secret. “Not exactly. I wanted to gossip with you.”

“About boys,” says Q, his tone bored and nasty.

“About Bond.”

Q’s face doesn’t freeze, exactly, but stalls in its transition to its next expression. He may as well hire a skywriter. “What about him?” he says, a beat too late.

“Well, as it turns out,” says Eve, “I’m in love with him.” The moment it clears her lips, she realizes that it’s been lodged in her throat for three months. No wonder it’s been hard to breathe.

Q is staring at her like she’s suddenly become real in all three dimensions where before she was just a printed cutout: Your Black Coworker. He clears a spot of foam from his lips. Looks her in the eye.

“Me too.”

 

As it turns out, over the next six or so beers, Q has rather the longer claim. He’s known since the moment he was first appointed Technical Quartermaster and sent to supply Bond with a gun and a radio. Bond was apparently rather a cunt about it. Q has been in love ever since.

“And please don’t bother pointing out how pathetic it is,” he says. “He’s disgustingly straight.”

“How do you know?” asks Eve, and now it’s Q’s turn to look at her with pity.

“Only a straight man could hate women so much.”  

It’s so true that Eve promptly switches to whiskey.

 

The evening deteriorates accordingly, and pretty soon Eve is balancing between a dumpster and Q, pissing into an upturned cinder block.

“I’m getting us a nice warm Uber,” Q is saying. “We’ll drive until dawn and watch the sun rise.”

“But how will we find an address that far away? I don’t know any addresses in Brighton,” Eve says, and bursts out laughing.

“What?”

“Brighton,” Eve says. “Oh, shit.” She has pissed on her shoes.

“Come on,” says Q, taking her by the arm. “Leave it. Just leave it. It doesn’t matter, Eve. None of this matters. What matters is… is…” He’s standing with one foot on the curb and one foot off, gesturing in a broad way at the streetlight.

“You’re drunk as fuck,” Eve shrieks delightedly.

“And you’re not?” says Q, his words twisting around in the sour way Eve’s starting to think he can’t help. “I didn’t come to you all sad and… sad. I was keeping everything very well hidden!” He sits down on the curb heavily, gathers his breath, and then howls, eloquently, at the moon. Eve goes and sits beside him, her piss-spattered shoes hooked over one finger. “Being friends with you has been fun,” he tells her.

“It has,” agrees Eve. “I hope you remember we’re friends tomorrow, when you sober up.”

“I will if you will,” he says, and after a couple of attempts, they shake on it.

 

 

 

To Eve’s surprise, they do not stop being friends. Instead of defensive iciness, she is greeted the next day by a shy present: a cup of terrible vending machine coffee and a packet of aspirin from an office First Aid kit. Q must have left them on her desk mere moments before she arrived, judging from the temperature of the coffee. Eve sends him an emoji-packed message of thanks, along with a video of cats knocking things off of shelves. A moment after she hits send, Gareth sticks his head out into her office.

“Eve, I must tell you that the organization’s Slack channel is strictly monitored at all times for usage and the results forwarded to superiors.”

Eve winces. “Sorry, Gareth.”

“Which is why I was going to say, you should really look for the one entitled ‘Cats being cunts’, it’s much better.”

“Thank you, Gareth,” Eve says to the closing door.

 

 

Q: It’s really quite extraordinary. I’ve been violently

ill four times since arriving at work. You would think

there’d be nothing left at this point to disgorge.

 

E: That’s nothing. When I got home, I was

carrying a policeman’s walkie-talkie. Did

we assault any policemen last night?

 

Q: No, but that does make sense when

combined with something I remember

you saying after last call.

E: What’s that?

 

Q: “Watch this, I’m going to take his walkie-talkie.”

E: Oh God.

 

Q: …

 

Q: so, again Friday? 

E: Sure.

 

 

 

They go to a club that Q is keen to try, which turns out to be a stodgy supper establishment with a thick cigar atmosphere. Eve orders a basket of Scotch eggs to try and get a jump on the morning’s hangover. Q sniffs at her plebian fare until the precise moment the eggs arrive, then descends like a vulture. She swats him like a teenager and tells him he has atrocious manners—around a mouthful of Scotch egg, he says, “And your handbag is cheap, but I don’t go pointing it out.”

“Brat,” Eve tells him. “When do we get to the makeover montage, as long as we’re playing to stereotype.”

“Never,” says Q viciously. “Your rare fashion missteps are the only thing which cheer me in my cold, cold dungeon of a basement.”

“You specifically requested placement on the ground floor,” Eve reminds him. “You made all this fuss about Silva having exploited an unforeseen advantage. You made charts!”

“Nevertheless,” Q says. “It is rather chilly.”

“You lost all my sympathy the moment they issued you a new supercomputer,” Eve tells him. “I can’t even get a new shredder, Gareth keeps coming out to repair it with 3 in 1 oil.”

“That’s because we’re gradually removing all the shredders in the building and replacing the practice with a more secure procedure,” Q says.

“What could possibly be more secure than shredding?” says Eve.

“The documents will be taken to the basement, chopped, mulched, then burnt,” says Q.

“…Okay.”

“One of the ways Silva infiltrated us was through our document shredders,” says Q. “There was a very small camera mounted just before the blades of M’s shredder. We discovered it after she’d died.”

“Oh,” says Eve.

“We’re also replacing all the emergency sprinkler heads, ergonomic sitting ball desks, and one beta fish.”

Eve blinks. “I can understand how he might have planted recording devices in the other two things, but how was the beta fish involved?”

“Oh, it wasn’t,” said Q. “We’ve just had to replace the armaments’ department’s beta fish, he died. His name was Charlie.”

“Oh.”

“He was very lovely and purple.”

Eve raises her glass. “To Charlie the beta fish.”

“To Charlie.”

 

Charlie receives rather more of a send-off than most beta fish, and since the supper club is close to Eve’s apartment, she ends up hosting a tipsy Q on her couch.

“Funny,” she says, “You’ve now seen the inside of my apartment more than he has.”

“He never came over?” Q asks, one eye open to conserve energy.

Eve thinks about it. “No. We were always at his place.”

“On his turf.”

“And on his terms,” Eve agrees. “Rather drearily typical, isn’t it?”

“Don’t try to imply it wasn’t marvelous,” Q says. “Be smug, like I would be.”

Eve grins widely.

“Of course it was,” Q moans, covering his face. “He would be the only talented straight man in all bloody Britain.”

“It’s true, the vast majority of them are useless,” Eve agrees.

“But not him?”

“Not him.”

They contemplate.

“What d’you reckon he sees in her?” Eve asks.

“You’re not serious.”

“Of course I am.”

“Well, keeping in mind I haven’t met her and am only going on some very thorough files, I’d say she’s a leggy nymph with that very specifically French talent for keeping their mouth shut when they have nothing interesting to say and letting men project all sorts of ideas onto them. So basically, she’s a sex object and a swan and a silent goddess made out of fog and as long as she keeps up that act, which will basically be forever because she’s French, you’re fucked.”

“You get very alliterative when you’re drunk,” Eve observes.

“English at Oxford,” says Q.  

“Economics at Cambridge,” says Eve. “Class of 2004.”

“I was class of 2010,” volunteers Q.

“Ugh, that’s disgusting, you’re a foetus,” says Eve, rising to her feet. “Loo’s in the hallway if you need it, kitchen to the left. Help yourself to anything in the night, I sleep like the dead.”

“Goodnight,” Q says, watching her climb the stairs with his one good eye.

 

 

That night, Eve has an interesting dream. She is sitting in a sunny window, playing a game with Bond, a puzzle-like game with chess pieces and newspaper. She cannot name the game, but she knows the rules, and they are smiling at each other as they play.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” Bond says to Eve. “She was born on a Tuesday.”

 

 

“What could that possibly mean?” Eve asks Edwin. “Born on a Tuesday?”

“Well, Monday’s child is fair of face,” begins Edwin, and Eve chimes in:

_“_ _Tuesday's child is full of grace,_

_Wednesday's child is full of woe,_

_Thursday's child has far to go,_

_Friday's child is loving and giving,_

_Saturday's child works hard for a living,_

_But the child who is born on the Sabbath day_

_Is bonnie and blithe and good and gay.”_

They conclude in unison, and Eve grimaces. “I always hated the Sabbath child.”

“What a suckup,” Edwin agrees. “But who are you?”

“I always thought of myself as a Saturday,” said Eve.

“Mmm. Hard-working, industrious,” says Edwin.

“Surprised I didn’t pick Thursday’s child?” asked Eve. “Far to go?”

“Your mother’s pick for you? No,” said Edwin. “But the fear that she was right is always there, and so you’ve picked the most unimpeachable role model for yourself. Saturday’s child is good and industrious, but modesty is built right into the description—she works hard for a living. So it’s not inherent drive, it’s just survival, and is therefore unremarkable. You’ve batted praise away from yourself very effectively and are hoping I won’t notice because you didn’t pick something worse. Your mother taught you well.”

“…Damnit,” says Eve.

“Never fear,” says Edwin. “I have a solution.”

“What?” says Eve, even though she can smell a trap.

“Send you to find the solution!” says Edwin, clapping his long hands together. “Homework assignment. Figure out which child you really are. Very important, for a grade, lots of points. Have it to me by next session. Time’s up.”

 

 

Eve spends her entire Sunday investigating the possibility that she may be Monday’s child at Sephora. It takes a lot of investigating. Loads.

 

 

“What have you done to your face,” Q sputters on Monday morning. “What is all… that?”

“It’s contouring,” Eve tells him.

“Like hell it is,” Q says, and rips a handkerchief from his pocket, actually spitting on it and making towards Eve with a determined look on his face until she puts his wrist in a judo lock.

“Drop it.”

“You’re terribly violent,” Q complains, rubbing his wrist.

“I’m a spy.”

“Spies are supposed to be able to use camouflage. You’re wearing gold lipstick, really, Eve, who did that to you?”

“You don’t like it?” Eve says. “I thought I blended rather well.”

“It doesn’t matter how thoroughly you’ve blended when what you’ve done is cover Westminster Cathedral in bronzer,” says Q, and Eve blushes.  “Listen: Bond is an idiot, and no amount of makeup will change that. Now that I’ve said that, I’m going to go drown myself in the flood chambers below MI6.”

“Love you too,” says Eve to his retreating back, and then Gareth comes out of his office and nearly walks into a filing cabinet.

“Eve, what the hell have you done to your face.”

“I’m washing it off!” Eve bellows, already on her way to the women’s.

 

 

 

So that’s it for Monday’s child. Eve soothes her wounded ego with noodles in Dalston Lane, sitting in the window with her feet up on the heater, watching passersby with their colorful umbrellas and their shopping bags. There’s a growing trend towards hot pink, Eve notices with approval.

“Enjoying the voyeurism?”

She feels the voltage thrill up her spine before she consciously registers who’s speaking. Straightening up in her seat, she wills herself not to turn around, even though she’s pretty sure her smile can be heard from behind her. “It’s only voyeurism if someone is naked.” He’s standing behind her; this close, the scent of his Bvlgari Black is like being wrapped in his arms. “May I join you?”

“Of course,” Eve says, and ruthlessly silences her mother’s voice, thirteen years gone, telling her that opening the door to the devil is the same as pouring him a drink and offering him a seat next to the fireplace.

Bond takes the seat next to her, and noodles and tea appear next to him in an effortless way that lets her know her assent was anticipated and counted upon. It would be infuriating, if it weren’t so sexy.

“You know,” he says, pounding his chopsticks on the counter to free them of their wrapper, “I used to live around here, back in the day.”

“Yeah? What were you doing?”

“Mainly, selling drugs to posh kids,” says Bond.  

“Was that where M found you?” asks Eve, and Bond’s smile vanishes. It’s flattering, his visible irritation—strangers get the poker face. “No. She came along rather later.”

“She got me straight out of uni,” says Eve, compensating for the pry with a tidbit of information about herself. “I walked through the Doctor’s door of the Senate-House and there she was, holding my certificate.”

Bond snorts. “Drama queen.”

“Yes!” Eve says. “That was what got me, the drama of it all. The mysterious woman, holding my future in her hands, looking like an old, proud clock. How could I possibly do equity valuations for Price Waterhouse after that?”

“Couldn’t,” Bond says, and promptly has a coughing fit around a fragment of hot pepper he has aspirated. It is the first time Eve has ever seen him have a dining mishap. She watches, fascinated. When he composes himself, she says, “I couldn’t. And neither could you, I wager.”

“Well, stock options so rarely offer you the chance to be shot at,” says Bond, his eyes streaming. “Good noodles. Spicy.”

Eve watches him steel himself for the next dive into the bowl. Just as he’s getting ready to address the next mouthful, she says, lightly, “Sake?”

 

 

 

Bond is considerably harder to match, drink for drink, than Q. Eve tries to pace herself, but Bond approaches drinking in a team-spirited way—every drink comes in sets of two, and he waits until she has thrown hers down before setting up the next round like a pinspotter in a bowling alley. As they drink, they talk about near misses. Bond once spent an evening on spring hols with a friend from uni. They were drinking and got separated. The friend couldn’t find Bond, assumed he’d went off with a girl, and went home to sleep. Bond, unable to find his friend in an era before cell phones, kipped on a park bench and spent a rather miserable night getting chilled to the kidneys in a spring drizzle. The next morning, the friend was killed in his own bed by a falling piece of Pan Am Flight 103.

“I didn’t have friends for a long time after that,” said Bond, which is one of those statements that falls out of his mouth with the delicacy of a bomb floating out the doors of a Boeing Fortress, the destruction blossoming several moments after he’s spoken. Eve lets the dust settle, then speaks: “I once was engaged.”

“Really,” says Bond. “To whom?”

Eve enjoys, for a moment, imagining a note of jealousy in his voice. “To a greengrocer.”

“A greengrocer,” Bond says, the incredulity building.

“Yes,” says Eve. “He was a schoolmate, from a good family. In fact, so good that I didn’t realize he was an abusive twat until we lived together. My mother was beside herself when I didn’t marry him. Told me I’d be ruined forever, that no proper man would ever have me. Turns out, she was right, in a way.” Eve says this lightly, to offset the bitter joke of it. She can feel Edwin frowning in her head.

Bond is frowning in an identical way. “What d’you mean?”

“Well, I haven’t been married, have I?” says Eve, and shovels noodles into her mouth. It takes her a minute, around the chewing, to notice that Bond looks properly angry. That he’s rooting around in his pocket for cash. When he finds it, he drops too many bills on the table before pushing back, his movements jerky. “Did it ever occur to you,” he says, “that you were never married, because you like the chase far more than the being caught?”

With that, he is gone.

 

 

 

It takes Eve a few moments to get over the shock. But once she does, she is furious.

“How dare he suggest that I’m the fucking one who’s playing hard to get?!” she spits. “He’s the one who’s gone off and gotten engaged without so much as a by-your-leave to a bloody civilian because she… speaks French, and looks good wearing a peacoat! Everyone looks good wearing a peacoat! It’s their defining characteristic!”

“Classic military styling is surprisingly forgiving,” agrees the bus driver. “But lovie, can you budge over? Other people need to pay their fare.”

Eve looks over her shoulder at a furious queue. “Oh, shit.”

She rides the bus in circles through Shoreditch and Aldgate, furiously texting Q:

 

E: I am going to kill him and

make it look like an accident. I’m a spy,

I can do that.

 

 

Q: You realize all our texts are monitored,

don’t you? We’re spies. They keep an eye.

 

 

E: they’re monitored BY YOU!!!

 

 

Q: I don’t see your point.

 

 

E: BE. A. MATE.

 

E: Help me murder him.

 

E: I’ll let you fuck him first.

 

E: Though, fair warning, he’s no

good when he’s drunk. Which is

fucking most of the time.

 

 

Q: Now the truth comes out. I knew

he wasn’t perfect. More dirt. Now.

 

Q: I’m stuck in a training on the new

requisitions system. I would prefer

garroting. I demand you distract me.

 

 

E: He doesn’t know the difference

between Prince and Boy George when

they come on the radio.

 

E: Not at all. He thinks Prince

is a band, and that “Karma Chameleon” is

their biggest hit.

 

E: He hates cats. Like actually

truly hates them. I don’t know why.

 

E: I’ve seen him hiss at one.

 

E: It went scooting under a bin.

 

 

 

Q: … You’re a bit shit at this dishing business, you

know that?

 

E: Would you prefer to know only his

sexual faults?

 

Q: Of course. Yes, please.

 

Q: Tell me he farts in bed and likes

to be called something terribly embarrassing, like

“Father Christmas”.

 

Q: Help me stab my hopeless longing

like a worm with a cocktail fork.

 

Q: Only then can I truly be free.

 

 

E: He has restless legs. At night he

 thrashes around in sheets

like a trapped eel.

 

Q: You’re hopeless.

 

Eve goes home and submerges herself in her bathtub, water up to the nostrils like a crocodile. Her gun rests between the sink and the edge of the tub, barrel down. Eve doesn’t like exposing it to steam, but the alternative—going unarmed and naked into a room with only one point of egress—is unacceptable. Eve selected Edwin based almost solely on his willingness to accept a perpetually armed patient. That they get along beautifully—that Edwin is the kindly grandparent Eve never had—is simply an unexpected bonus. 

 

She hears the front door lock being picked with her ears before she really registers it with her brain; she’s already out of the tub and standing with the gun cocked before it occurs to her to be frightened. The bathroom door creaks open, and Eve raises the gun smoothly and fluidly, only to drop it again, looking away and cursing a blue streak.

“Bloody—what the _hell_ do you think you’re playing at?”

“Coming to see you, naturally,” says Bond, his expression mild. “Would you really have shot me again?”

“Don’t tempt me,” Eve says, and shoves past him to go into her bedroom and find a proper bathrobe. Her feet are leaving puddles all over her floor. “What do you _want_?”

“To apologize,” says Bond.

“Most men don’t break in when they’re apologizing, and I don’t see the ones that do,” says Eve firmly, tying her bathrobe.

Bond spreads his hands slightly. “Make an exception?”

Eve rolls her eyes. “Make me a _drink_.”

The corner of Bond’s mouth quirks up, just a bit, as he leaves the room and goes back downstairs; Eve hears him taking out tumblers and rummaging about in the liquor cabinet.

“Don’t make me one of those horrid fucking martinis,” Eve yells down after him. “I want a proper drink!”

Bond appears at the bottom of the stairs. “You don’t like the martinis?”

“I hate them,” says Eve. “Gin is disgusting, may as well suck on a pine tree.”

Bond looks as though someone has just kneed the Queen in the tits. “Is there anything else you wish to disclose at this late date in our relationship?”

“Yeah,” says Eve, feeling saucy. “I scored better than you on tactical driving.”

Bond has no response; looking miffed, he disappears to fix the drink, and Eve is left to dry her hair and the spaces between her toes and brush her teeth, all before she realizes that Bond has just said the words ‘our relationship’. She spits out her toothpaste on the faucet when she realizes it. Not only do they have an ‘our relationship’, it’s apparently progressed ‘to this late date’ in Bond’s mind. Eve wonders where the housebreaking stage falls, in Bond’s relationship timeline. Sex, oblique flirting, retreat, housebreaking. Perhaps next they will meet her parents and do some light insurance fraud. She puts on a set of blue boxers with yellow duckies on them and a sweatshirt that advertises the University of California, and descends the stairs. Bond is standing in her living room with two drinks, looking like he’s waiting for her permission to sit down. She’s never seen him this far out of his element. It’s a good look on him.

“What is this?” she says, taking the glass from him.

“It’s a Sazerac,” he says. “Try it.”

She does, and the heat of the drink spreads its roots down through her like a golden tree. “It’s good.”

“Yes.”

“Sit,” Eve decides, and they do. Eve sips her drink. She is not going to be the one to rescue him from this silence, and she’s curious what he’s come here to say.

Bond studies her face for some time before speaking.

“I never explained to you about Madeline.”

“You didn’t.”

“It occurs to me that that was a mistake,” Bond says, and then stops. Eve waits for the rest of the sentence for several beats before realizing that there isn’t going to be one. She almost laughs.

“Are you _apologizing?”_

“Yes.” He says it simply, without any intonation or rancor, and that rather takes the wind out of Eve’s sails. She sinks back against the cushions.

“Oh.”

They sit and stare at each other across the coffee table. Bond sips his drink. After a while, Eve feels bolder.

“Why, exactly?”

“Why Madeline?”

“Why her, why sorry, why now. Why are you _here_ , James? Why aren’t you home, I don’t know, selecting window treatments with Madeline?”

“She was the daughter of someone I questioned. I’m sorry I never talked with you before leaving. I was a bit of a cock today. You’re here, therefore so am I. And I am not selecting window treatments with Madeline because I split with her four days ago, and she is taking the apartment until she can make new arrangements.”

Eve assimilates until the room stops spinning. It occurs to her that Bond has answered all her questions in a very precise order. It occurs to her that she could ask more.

“Did you split up with her because of me?”

“Yes.”

“Is that what today was about?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to answer all my questions with monosyllables?” says Eve, and feels the heat in the room go all wobbly as Bond comes to stand over her.

“Ask me something worth answering and we’ll see,” he growls, and the kiss scrubs everything away like a wildfire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“So. A witness’s daughter.”

“Yes.”

“How did _that_ happen?”

Bond smirks, rolling to his elbow as the sheet falls away from his torso like rain rippling over marble. “Jealous?”

“Curious.”

“She could shoot a Walther PPS M2,” Bond says, as though that explains everything.

Eve seriously entertains the possibility that Bond may, in fact, be thirteen years old. MI6 background checks **have** left something to be desired, lately. “Was that really all there was?”

“No,” says Bond seriously. “She could also pair wine with shellfish.”

“Stop it!” Eve says, though the effect is rather spoiled by her giggle.

Bond’s eyes crinkle at her, but when she stops laughing, he says, “She had the irresistible gravity of someone who is not the person you are running away from.” 

“Was that me, then? The person you were running away from?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It’s fairly complicated.”

“Try me.”

Bond speaks slowly. “You… see a side of me that not many people get to see. In fact, only one other has ever gotten to see it. Before you. You’ve heard about her, I’d imagine.”

Eve nods quietly. There are not too many people in MI6 who haven’t at least heard some kind of rumor about Vesper Lynd.

Bond continues. “So, when I began to feel very comfortable sharing that… less guarded side of myself with you, it reminded me of what happened the last time I started to feel that way. So I ran.”

Eve waits a beat until she is certain he’s done. Then she says, in her very brattiest voice,  “Sooooooo. Not all that complicated, really.” Bond gives her a heartfelt finger, but his eyes are amused, so she continues. “So dark. So unknowable and mysterious. Like Heathcliff, in a way.”

Bond is trying, and failing, to look stern. “Are you going to make fun of me all night, or are we going to fuck again?”

“I wasn’t aware I had to choose,” said Eve. “But if there’s a choice…” She lets her hand drift meaningfully down his iliac crest. Looking him very deeply in the eyes, she says, “I think I’d like to make fun of you all night.”

“I knew it,” said Bond.

“Walked right into it, that one.”

“I did.”

They smile at each other broadly. Bond traces her palm with a fingertip. “Would you like a bit of a fry-up?” he asks, out of nowhere, and Eve is surprised to discover that she is **starving**.

“Yes, _please_ ,” she says. “Where were you thinking of ordering from?”

“Nowhere,” says Bond. “I was thinking I’d cook for you.”

“You can cook?” says Eve.

 

 

 

 

As it turns out, Bond can cook. Shooed away from the stove, Eve can only perch at the breakfast bar and watch the muscles in his back flex as he reaches for tools—a spatula, a grippy silicone thing. He cooks with the same grave expression that he does everything else. Eve is beginning to wonder if he was a grave little boy, too.

“Do any pictures exist of you when you were a teenager?” she asks. “Or have you had them all destroyed?”

Bond pauses, then goes back to stirring linguini carbonara in Eve’s nonstick skillet. “Burnt.”

Eve thinks she can detect a hint of wryness in his tone, but then again there was that whole business with Silva and Bond’s old family estate, apparently, exploding, so whether he’s joking is anyone’s guess. Eve wonders if being in a relationship with Bond will mean always struggling to tell if he’s joking. She wonders if she is now in a relationship with Bond.

“Are we in a relationship now?” she asks, because she’s had quite a successful streak tonight with direct questions.

Bond slides two helpings of carbonara into bowls. As he hands her one of them, he says, “Yes. If you want to be.”

Eve takes the bowl, and a bite. It is delicious, studded with crystalline fragments of bacon and swirled with wet, rich yolk. She swallows.

“I’ll make you a deal.”

“Yes?”

“I’ll be your girlfriend if you help me solve a riddle.”

Bond’s eyebrows rise clear to his hairline. “A riddle.”

“Yes. My therapist wants me to have solved it by our next appointment and I can’t crack it.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“There’s a nursery rhyme,” says Eve. “All about the different kinds of girls. It goes by the days of the week. _Monday’s child is fair of face,_ _Tuesday's child is full of grace,”_

here, Bond chimes in, and they finish out the rhyme together.

_“Wednesday's child is full of woe,_

_Thursday's child has far to go,_

_Friday's child is loving and giving,_

_Saturday's child works hard for a living,_

_But the child who is born on the Sabbath day_

_Is bonnie and blithe and good and gay.”_  

“Exactly,” says Eve when they’ve finished. “I’m to figure out which one I am. I’ve already eliminated Monday, so don’t even flatter me, it was a disaster. My therapist suggests that Saturday’s child is a deflection of my mother’s judgement, and that Thursday would represent that judgement, so we’re left with Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.”

Bond blinks. “What’s wrong with Tuesday?”

“Oh, it can’t be Tuesday. Tuesday’s someone… else,” Eve says, lamely. Mercifully, Bond doesn’t push. Instead, he stands, and comes around the breakfast bar to the stool where Eve is sitting. He takes her empty bowl out of her hands. Sets it to the side. Takes her face in his hands, and kisses her, slow and luxuriously, under her yellow kitchen light. It is twelve-thirty at night on a Sunday. Eve has to be at work in the morning. She has a terrible hangover waiting to pounce in, oh, say, four and a half hours. She has to clean out Charlie the beta fish’s old tank before it begins to smell. She has a grapefruit cleanse she has been meaning to try. Instead, she winds her hands through the soft hair at the base of Bond’s skull and kisses him back, really tasting him, taking her time. She is surprised to discover that she enjoys taking her time; that he is actually quite patient when she is not ripping his clothes off and pointing him up the stairs; that, when it comes to simple touch, she is _ravenous_. So when he pulls away from her mouth to strew kisses along her collarbone, Eve lets him. When he sinks his hands into her hair, Eve doesn’t worry about how difficult it will be to fix in the morning. And when he puts his mouth to her ear to tell her what kind of woman she is, and how little nursery rhymes have to do with it, Eve listens not to the content of his speech but the sound of his voice, and the timbre and the fervor and the warmth that radiate outward when a man really means it. Eve has worked hard her whole life, and she has more yet to go. She has been full of grace and woe in equal measures. She is starting to believe she may, possibly, be fair of face. She may even be bonnie and blithe and good and gay. But this kiss, this moment, is making Eve realize that she has never been particularly loving and giving to herself. A nice massage here, an efficient lay there, all skirting very carefully around the ravenous hunger at the center of herself. What had she been so afraid of? Right now, in this kiss, Eve can’t remember why she ever thought it would be—could be—a bad idea to let herself be loved. So she decides, right then and there, to be Friday’s child to herself. She lets Bond into her bed. In the morning, she allows him to call into work for her. When her next appointment with Edwin comes, she asks to meet him at the candy counter at Harrod’s and makes him buy her the largest lolly available, the size of a rainbow dinner plate. The next time Gareth has a temper tantrum, Eve unplugs her own phone, carries it into Gareth’s office, and smashes it too. She is being caught, and doing the catching, and she pours out love to her friends and her family and Q and Gareth and Bond and herself in equal measure.

 

Every day of the week.

**Author's Note:**

> As with all my writing, this fic owes its existence to the readership, encouragement, and keen editorial eye of JenTheSweetie, whose patience with my disastrous inability to convincingly mimic British English is exceeded only by her willingness to read and re-read dozens of iterations of the same fic. (Sample communication from me to her: "I just added a paragraph that changes EVERYTHING! Come see!") This one has been under construction for a truly ungodly amount of time; I just went back and searched my Gmail account, and the first known mention of this particular fic dates from February 2016. That's over a year and a half on a 24-page fic. Sarah McLachlan puts out albums faster. I do have an excuse, though, and it pertains to the nature of this fic. Between February of 2016 and today, I moved across the country to see if I could tie down my own personal Bond. This fic started as a way for me to explore some of the themes of our (now almost 14-year) relationship. My own personal 007, who shall remain unnamed, has a fear of commitment, a love of pugilism, women, and whiskey, and does a mean Sean Connery. He named this story from his spot on our couch, in our living room, while I was on my final editing Skype with JenTheSweetie. Some things are worth waiting for.


End file.
